


Diametric Opposition

by JazzhandsMcLeg



Series: Amara "One-Punch" Jones [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, featuring my Guardian and her Ghost, rated T for musings on mortality, this is part of a whole series dating back to D1 but I'm only posting the good stuff here, you know how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzhandsMcLeg/pseuds/JazzhandsMcLeg
Summary: Everything is very different from how it will be, and from how it was. Time is full of such incompatibilities.Finding Saint-14, the first time around.
Relationships: Female Guardian & Ghost (Destiny)
Series: Amara "One-Punch" Jones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832206
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Diametric Opposition

The final door opened into hell.

It was a place Amara had been before, once, with Sagira—but it was no easier to accept now than it had been then. She tried to focus on what she knew. The bare stone and dry dust, just like the Moon’s. The hot, dry wind was much like Mars’, if you were in Freehold or out in the dunelands at least. The darkness? She’d been in dark, and Dark, places before.

But this was neither the Moon nor Mars. This was a future where the Vex had won, and, what was more, her Ghost was new to it: Amara felt Clementine’s raw, untamed horror in their bond, felt his attention pulling her gaze toward the northwest. She followed his pull, already sick with knowing what she would see: the Sun, swollen and sullen, a hulking black mass on the horizon.

Neither alive nor truly dead. What a terrible fate for anything, never mind a star. She’d never quite dare to reach for Solar here.

“You all right there, Guardian?” Sagira asked. (A lifeline. The outside world still existed.)

Clementine answered for both of them. “They put out the _Sun_.”

“Oh yeah, you missed our first trip here. Vex are quite the decorators, aren’t they?”

“It’s a simulation only, Ghost,” Osiris said gruffly when Clementine did not answer. “A time that may not ever come.”

Sagira butted back in. “Don’t let it eat at you. Do what you can to change it.”

“...Right. Right.”

Amara turned away from the desolate vista before her and did what she knew best: she bore up under the weight, put one foot forward, and then the other.

\--

Mercury was colder than it had been for millions of years. The Sun was dying. Somewhere far away from here, the Tower and the Last City were likely just another heap of ash on another empty planet—and who could tell where the Traveler was? And, worst of all, this was a future the Vex had projected onto the vast screen of the Infinite Forest because it was _possible_.

Amara acknowledged all of this — and then set it aside in favor of the will to fight. Thus the Void came easily to her hands. _Not today._ Today she was taking something—someone—back. She was a conduit, a wall, a defiance, a spy and a jailbreaker deep behind enemy borders. She hurled her hopeful pain at the Reverent Mind like the rebuttal it was, and brought it crashing down.

\--

Heaps of rusted metal glinted everywhere, piled high and then compacted like cars in a Cosmodrome junkyard. Amara stood on tiptoe to see over those nearest, craning her neck, and found more, and more, until they simply melted away into the dark.

“What happened...?”

She crouched, careful to keep her gun pointed in the direction of the door, and picked a piece of red glass out of a heap of scraps. An eye.

“Guardian?”

“Vex. Thousands and thousands of them.”

 _The signal’s coming from further in_ , Clementine informed her, then called out, “Saint?”

There was no answer. Amara began to press forward. It was slow going: the...room? the cave? was large, massive even, but not big enough for all the metal corpses it contained: she either had to pick and weave her way around the piles or climb them. Finally, as she clambered past another stack of limbs, she saw a light. A glow, really, cool and fresh in this darkened nightmare of a world, if somewhat artificial. She waded toward it, rounded a corner—and stopped dead. An Exo’s body, mangled almost as badly as the Vex but dignified in its final repose, lay on a bed of solid light before her. With a pang, she realized that the other Guardian's Ghost was nowhere to be seen.

A few more steps brought her to bear. Amara held out her hand, and Clementine emerged to scan the legendary Titan.

“Saint-14’s Light is gone.”

She winced and bowed her head. The verdict wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t lessen the reflexive flare of hurt: another immortal warrior, lost forever. On the other end of the comms, a long moment passed—

“Rest in peace, my friend.”

—and then returned in its silence.

Amara turned in a slow circle, taking in the story of what had happened in this place. She was no Hunter, but she knew how to read combat as well as anyone: here, a giant boot had cracked a harpy against the unforgiving ground in a move she herself had used before. There, he’d ripped a leg from a fallen minotaur and used it to beat down a brace of goblins. Dotted in places throughout the wreckage were a handful of shotgun casings, just as worn as the Vex their shells had killed. Buried in the shattered chassis of another minotaur: a rocket launcher, battered and scratched from much use as a blunt instrument. _That_ made her shiver: it must have been his final weapon, his last resort. Its loss had clearly been the beginning of the end for the older Titan.

The Light he’d used left no trace after so long in such a terrible world. But still the air above and around and beneath Saint-14’s final resting place glowed.

“I think we should leave him here,” Clementine said into the resounding silence. “It looks like the Infinite Forest laid him to rest. There’s a...monument of sorts.” Still no response. “Did the Vex learn to—respect him?”

“And so they should have,” Osiris answered after a moment, sounding almost back to his normal self. “Well. It is time to return to our reality, Guardian. The door you came through must be closed.”

Amara didn’t move. “We’ll be there in just a minute,” Clementine said for her, and Osiris and Sagira must have understood, because they said nothing.

Neither did Clementine. Amara watched the light above Saint-14 turn over and over on itself for a long moment, thinking. One more Guardian who was never coming home. This one had died a hero’s death, it was true, but he’d done so alone, in a place so distant from the reality of the Tower that her mind shied away from the idea. And—what must it feel like, to fight and fight and fight for so long and then find that the next blow, the next step, was at last completely beyond you?

She had approached that point a few times, but never quite reached it: _not today_. But the Sun would eventually rise on that day. It had for Saint. And then...

Clementine stirred, disturbed from his own contemplations by the dark currents of her thoughts, and Amara tore her focus away from them and back to the body at rest before her. No Ghost, but there was something near the crook of Saint-14’s elbow, caught in his armor: a little bag. She reached out with her free hand and pulled it away. Remarkably, it didn’t crumble in her grasp; it had been well-made. She gripped it tightly, feeling the edges of something small and rectangular beneath the bag’s material.

_This must have been important to Saint, if he kept it safe with him until he died. Osiris might want it now. I’ll take it to him._

_...I don’t think I ever told you this, but Saint-14 was one of the first Guardians I ever met_ , Clementine said, as though he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he hadn’t. _He was...well. I always hoped you’d turn out like him. And I wasn’t disappointed._

They’d go back and break the news to the Vanguard of Saint’s death. Hope for his continued survival would be replaced with the certainty of his proven death. But Amara would carry on, now always partially on Saint’s behalf. She could do nothing else.

_You were a good friend, Saint. Goodbye._

Amara took a step back, then turned and walked away with settled shoulders and a level gaze. Her handcannon was ready, but no Vex appeared to challenge her. The light from Saint’s memorial faded from sight, and then so too did the simulant future that had been the scene of his last stand.

\--

Osiris did not want the bag she’d taken for him. He gave no explanations, only said it rightfully belonged to her now. Amara did not argue. She took its contents—a single data chip of some sort—to Vance instead, and stood in patient silence as he spoke to her and worked his decryption magic. Clementine transmatted the new weapon away almost before it had finished unfolding into being in the heart of the Infinite Forge. She’d look at it later.

Then she stood for a minute, treasuring the sights and sounds of Mercury—besieged, dangerous, desolate, but _alive_. She reached for the tiny flame of Solar power that burned in her heart, and she felt its warmth. She looked for Clementine in her bond, and found him as close as thought: right there with her. She took a deep breath, tasted the air, felt the flex of her armor as it shifted minutely to accommodate her expanding lungs.

“Brother Vance,” she said.

He turned to face her, a little startled, a little unsure: it was the first time she had ever spoken directly to him. “Guardian?”

“I’ll see you later, okay?”

His confusion melted away as he placed her. “Until next time, Guardian,” he said warmly.

_Let’s go home, Clementine._

_Transmatting now._

\--

It was a shotgun—a beauty of a piece, shiny chrome alloy with brass highlights, built to last, with a curving hook on the butt for a brace and another on the muzzle for a spike. Amara tended to agree with Zavala—at a shotgun’s typical effective range, her fists worked just as well—but for some jobs you really just needed the designated tool. This gun—the Perfect Paradox, as per Osiris’ cryptic message—was that tool.

Once she was done examining it, she let Clementine transmat it away again. Then she rose from her seat on the floor and crossed to her small window.

They were still in the little prefab room they’d been assigned after the Red War, when the majority of the people of the City had returned to find their homes burned or demolished. Priority work had been building stable, warm cubicles for people to live in until winter passed and proper houses and apartments could be constructed, and the hero of the Red War was not immune from that (nor would she have wished to be). Now reconstruction was well under way—in the City. Guardians would have to wait their turns for better dorms and custom housing, but Amara would never complain about that either. Certainly she missed the City, missed being able to walk to the market whenever she liked and listening to pedestrians and traffic instead of tipsy or arguing or overly exuberant Guardians. But her room was a place to rest her head, and it looked out over the western wall so she could watch the sunset if she wanted to. She did now, and after a moment Clementine appeared at her side to take in the view for himself.

She felt...quiet, contemplative, somber, as she had since she’d found Saint in the simulant future. She didn’t much want to speak, and Clementine seemed to be of a similar disposition. But some things were important. More important than that.

“Clementine.”

“Amara?”

“Will you...tell me about it someday?”

“About what?”

“Everything you did before you found me. I don’t know much.”

“It doesn’t really matter anymore,” he demurred.

“It does. You matter. _Saint_ mattered. And I'm not the only thing your life is about. You don’t have to if you’d rather not,” she added when he said nothing, “but I’d listen, if you wanted.”

“All right,” Clementine agreed after a pause. “But...some other time?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Tentatively, Amara offered her cupped hands to her Ghost. He flew to them and settled in immediately, and she shifted her grip to hold him to the hollow at the base of her throat.

She stood there like that, with Clementine in her hands, and looked to the west. The air was very still, and very bright. Clementine’s shell ticked and fidgeted reassuringly against her fingers and collarbone. Slowly, slowly, the Sun set on the Last City—and rose again on the other side of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Alejado and their story [_You've Got Time_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17513492/chapters/41256089), which strongly informed my presentation of Void Light. You should definitely go read that! It's so good! (And Alejado, if you're in here, I owe you a thorough and gushing review and I will be coming to pay my debts in the near future.)
> 
> If you want the music I used while I wrote this, [here it is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Rhm3mvD1E).
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
